


One Thousand Years of Sand

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: Lost
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-09
Updated: 2010-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-08 19:48:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/78922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long before Oceanic 815, Richard faces the echoes of a choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Thousand Years of Sand

In the hundred and twenty-second year, Jacob kisses him. Richard hasn't so much as touched anyone in all that time. He hasn't been alone. He's seen people come and go, he's seen them strive and die, and he's done what he can to help them at every turn, but he's moved through them like a ghost, among them but not of them, and lying awake in the darkness of a thousand nights, he reflects that there might be little difference between a god and a ghost, between immortality and eternal death.

He has put away Isabella. He has given her up. He is never to die, never to face the final separation that is the great divorce of her Heaven and her Hell, but this is a separation all the same, and if he is never to die, then it too is neverending. So he isn't alone, but he is, in every possible way. And then in the hundred and twenty-second year, Jacob kisses him.

Only afterward does it occur to him that Jacob, too, is alone. He feels mild embarrassment that it took him over a century to figure this out.

Jacob's lips taste like sand and wine, bitter and dry. Richard feels himself giving in the way he always has, sinking down into depths of fear and confusion, buoyed upward once again by Jacob's fingers playing at the skin at the small of his back, pushing up under his shirt. Richard's English is almost perfect now. It's a long time since he was Ricardo. He even dreams in English, his mother tongue ever more distant. But he tilts his head back, lets out a breath and whispers _Dios mio._

Jacob smiles against his throat. _Exactly._ Richard's back is against old stone that holds a chill accumulated over countless years. Time here is a fickle thing. For the moment they are alone, alone together, and once he would have called this a sin, but sin means very little anymore. He is shielded from Hellfire. He can do anything. Jacob is reaching between his legs and it should not be as good as it is.

A god takes certain liberties with his children. Richard knows this very well. Later, he will wonder how long this has been coming, and he will wonder why it didn't come sooner.

 

* * *

 

The Man in Black finds him on the beach. This happens occasionally. There is never any mention of the offer that stands, never any attempt to induce him to take it, and often the Man in Black is perfectly silent. Richard understands what this is; nothing more or less than a reminder. _I am still here. I am more than an abstraction. If you are going to work against me, you will have to look me in the eye._ There's no malice. Richard believes that the Man in Black is everything that Jacob has said, but malice is something he has never sensed. He thinks that the Man in Black must be very old, and there is a weariness about him that is entirely nonthreatening. Regardless, he keeps a certain distance. Today there is a faint bite mark just beneath his ear, turned toward where the Man in Black can see, and he tilts his head a little, wishing there was a way to hide it. He doesn't think he's ashamed. If this man is the Devil, if he is evil, if he is the very embodiment of Hell, there shouldn't be any reason to care what he thinks.

Nevertheless.

"He's been at you," the Man in Black says, taking a seat in the sand just beside and a little behind where Richard is sitting with his knees drawn up against his chest. "You don't have to answer. I can see it."

Richard shrugs. He hopes it doesn't look uncomfortable when he does it, however he's feeling.

"You think this is the first time he's done that? You think you're the only one?" The Man in Black laughs, and again, there's no malice in it, and no scorn that Richard can hear. "He takes what he can from people. He's seen that he can take this from you. It's all right, no one would blame you. You must be very lonely."

Richard grunts but doesn't turn his head. He acknowledges no truth in this, and it rankles to think that the Man in Black knows. The Man in Black knows far too much. Richard thinks that the Man in Black must speak just enough truth to make his lies more believable. But in fact, a great deal of it might be truth. Perhaps too much. Suddenly the sand is less comfortable beneath him, the sun less pleasant.

"He has a use for you right now," the Man in Black says. He's getting up, brushing sand off his pants; Richard still does not turn but he can hear above the low roar of the waves. "You think that'll last a lifetime? With the time he gave you?" He pauses and huffs a quiet laugh. "I hope you're right, for your sake."

Richard sits alone on the sand for a long time after. There is no one. He has nothing to do, no one to guide, no one to intercede with. When his fingertips move to his bare throat, he does not notice that they do.

Much later, he goes to Jacob, and Jacob is waiting for him, that small and faintly sardonic smile, eyes that, like the ocean, seem to surround him and extend much further than Richard can see. He has the feeling of sitting only on the surface of the world, some thin but impermeable membrane. He can never go deeper. Immortality stretches one out across the course of time, he thinks. Stretched far too thin. Too little of him for what he has to cover. Jacob's hands press him back and down, and this time it's not as rough, but it goes on for longer and somehow it hurts more. On his hands and knees he pushes back with his hips, head tossed back and lips stretched into a grimace. This will all make sense someday. There is a reason for everything. Jacobs curls an arm around his waist, pressing them back to chest, driving into him and murmuring something against the outer curve of his ear. After, with their skin sticky and the chamber still echoing with their moans, Richard presses his face into the crook of Jacob's neck and Jacob holds him. It feels like something granted, but not something offered. Richard rolls away. _I want to live. I want to live._

I don't know if I wanted this.

 

* * *

 

"You're very quiet today."

Richard isn't quite looking at him. He shrugs and kicks out at the sand. To his left, the stone stump of the leg rises into the pale dawn sky, surreal and imposing. He is not sitting in its shadow, but he's close. Jacob drops into a crouch beside him and offers him a mug of something that steams and smells sweet. Richard looks at it, finally up at Jacob, takes it.

"It's barely today yet." Richard sips the stuff in the mug; he thinks it might be some kind of tea, but it's sweet and weirdly thick. Satisfying. He finds himself resenting it and not knowing exactly why.

Jacob inclines his head as if granting that fact. "But you're still quiet. Something on your mind?"

Jacob's kiss bitten into his throat. Richard looks out at the horizon, the mug held between both palms. "There are new people coming." It isn't a question. He can feel it by now, a presence just over that horizon curve.

Jacob nods. "So you'll have work to do. You'll like that, I think."

"I do what you tell me," Richard whispers, and he hears the words when they're out and too late to take them back, and he knows Jacob will hear the tone and question it. He closes his eyes, feels a touch at his jaw. The edge of a fingertip. Jacob does not touch him when they're out in the open, not like that.

"We sat out here and I explained things to you, Ricardo." Richard winces at the name, doesn't even try to hide it. "You remember that? How long ago was that? I told you, I don't step in, and with people like you... I don't step in unless I'm asked." The touch firms, tilts Richard's head closer. Richard lets out a shaky breath. "You always have a choice."

_Not about this. What does it even mean, to have a choice?_ There is a cross buried in shallow earth. He wonders if he could find it again, if he had to.

"I promise you," Jacob whispers. His lips are so close, his breath a gentle puff of warmth, and Richard leans into it in spite of himself. "One day, this will all become clear. You'll see it happen." Richard wants to believe it. He thinks he does. Maybe new people are coming, but now it feels as though there is no one on this island but the two of them and never has been. No one else. An endless stretch of time, and all the room to make what sense of it he will.

One hundred and twenty-two years. It feels like nothing at all. Richard sits on the sand with Jacob at his side and the two of them watch the sun rise until the swell of the tide drives them back from the edge of the water, covering their footprints as though they were never there.


End file.
